Delay in transfer of cases to military courts

Shiite News: The process of transferring cases to military courts, established as a result of 21st amendment in the constitution, has been slowed down and no case has been sent to military courts since past few months. Interior Ministry has several cases but they could not be transferred to military courts apparently due to incomplete documents.

According to Shiite News, Millat Jafaria had also demanded that cases of Ashura, Arbaeen, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and other such incidents should be send to military courts but no action has been taken in this regard.

According to Dawn, one of the reasons of delay is the pending applications in Supreme Court whereas at least 8 criminals’ execution has been stopped due to cases filed in High Court.

It was in December 2015 that cases were sent to military courts last time which also included the cases of Safoora incident and Sabeen Mehmood’s murder.

Interior Ministry spokesperson has claimed that after December, provinces and the federal capital has sent only those cases to Interior Ministry which were either being heard in counter terrorism courts or those in which there were no acts of Pakistan Army act.

According to an official of Interior Ministry, these cases have been heard at the regular pace. In most of these cases, the accused are facilitators of terrorists and thus Interior Ministry has not sent those cases to military courts. However, lack of information about accused has also become a problem for Interior Ministry, the official further told.

According to the formal procedure, federal government’s approval is necessary before sending any case to military courts therefore, Defense ministry could not send these cases directly to military courts. Age of a criminal is also necessary to be known before the case is being sent to military court.